Words For My Feelings

So there's a little secret that maybe some of our listeners don't know about you. It's not like a secret.

Kind of. So every time we go to a movie at the theater or at home, Dave cries. He cries at movies like Firehouse Dog.

This is like this family joke on me. She doesn't even know. She didn't watch Firehouse Dog, but I did on an airplane on a mission trip back. My 16 year old son sitting beside me and he looks over and he goes, you're seriously crying at Firehouse Dog. It's this little dog that lived in the firehouse and got lost and they find him at the end and I'm over there tearing up. So he does that.

But in real life, you seldom cry. And that's the thing that we're like, why is that? Are you asking?

Yeah, kind of. I have no idea. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I don't know.

I just it's a joke. I cry in a movie theater in the dark. And I have a hard time feeling in life. Somewhere shut down those feelings. Maybe we'll bring Ron Deal and have another counseling session. Ron can come back in and counsel me. But so I need to learn how to feel. So we've got the person that can help me learn how to feel, right, Courtney?

I hope so, maybe. Well, welcome, Courtney Ricek, to Family Life Today. We're glad to have you here with us. Thanks for having me.

I'm glad to be here. And you wrote a book called Teach Me to Feel. I did, yes. She wrote it just for me. Just for you, yes.

Might have been just for me. And Courtney is the Managing Director at Risen Motherhood. She's an author of Teach Me to Feel and Glory in the Ordinary. Courtney, how many years have you been married to Daniel? Twelve years.

In about a month it'll be twelve years. Daniel's from our hometown. There are not a lot of people from Finley, Ohio, but Daniel is. So he knows about Wilson's hamburgers, which is no connection to us, and the greatest ice cream in the world, Dietz's.

And you have four sons. I do. And I will say about Wilson's, few things give me more anxiety than ordering a hamburger at Wilson's.

At Wilson's. It is a little stressful, isn't it? I can't do it. Like, you have to order it just right. And then it's like the soup guy on, like, Seinfeld where he, like, sends you to the back of the line if you do it wrong. And I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. So, yeah. That's why we do the drive-through. Yeah, I wait easier.

But yeah. But I do have four sons, yes. How old are they?

Eight, eight, almost six, and almost four. So you had twin boys. I did. And now you have four boys. I do.

And my third son looks, is about the same size as my twin, so they look like triplets. Oh, wow. Do people stop you in the stores? Oh, all the time.

What do they say? Oh, they say, are they all yours? That's, like, a common one. Or are they triplets? Or are you going to go for a girl? I mean, people ask that a lot, and I'm not. So I'm like, I could keep having children, and I would keep having boys, probably. They're pretty fun, aren't they?

They are. And there hasn't been a girl born in my husband's family since his aunt, who's in her 70s. Whoa. So I was like, you know, the rising name, it's just, it's just. Courtney, I want you to know that I have 12 nephews. So my parents had no granddaughters. And then when our kids started having kids, I thought, surely we're going to get a girl. And we did. Well, let's talk about Teach Me to Feel, which the subtitle is Worshiping Through the Psalms in Every Season of Life. And I love how you start the book, because you're talking about this time you go to the hospital, you're pregnant, and tell us what happened, because you end up staying there a little longer than you thought.

Right. So my fourth son was, I had a placenta abruption with my fourth son, which is a life-threatening pregnancy complication. And I was 33 weeks pregnant when I went into the hospital, and thought at first that maybe, like maybe my appendix had ruptured, which would have been preferable at the time to like having a placenta abruption, because if my appendix had ruptured, I would have been home probably in the next few days. Instead, I was like in the hospital for three weeks and I was on monitors, on continuous monitoring, and couldn't take care of my other children. My husband couldn't go home and take care of them because we were, it was very, like very touch and go crisis situation where even the doctors didn't want him going home because they thought if he went home that potentially I'd have to go into the O.R.

immediately and he wouldn't even be there for the birth. And so you're saying this was life-threatening not only for the baby, but for you. Yeah, so a placenta abruption is, mine was a partial abruption, but a full abruption gives you about five to ten minutes to save the baby and about 15 minutes to save the mom, because you bleed to death. A lot of abruptions are what are called like silent abruptions, where you can't always feel them and you can't see them.

You can't see them on ultrasound ever, and if you're not bleeding then there's no real indication that's happening. So mine was pain, so at least they knew something was going on. So the pain was a good indicator, but we couldn't, we just didn't know.

And the monitoring was a good indicator of how well Ben was faring, and he wasn't faring well when I was having pain and was having contractions. So my parents lived in Florida at the time, so they came and took my other boys home to Florida with them because we just couldn't care for them. Then there was a period of time where I couldn't even leave my hospital room. I remember like thinking hospital bed rest would feel like a break prior to being on hospital bed rest.

You know, like you can watch TV, people bring you food, maybe you can get some magazines. And for me, I just couldn't, if anyone's ever been in a health crisis, you can't always gather your thoughts to do anything. And so for me, I was just in this constant state of panic of are things going to be okay today? I was always worried about my children, and so I had my Bible, and so I just read the Psalms. In God's kindness, I had studied the Psalms prior to that in a Bible study that whole year prior, and had really kind of grown to understand how God had orchestrated putting them together, what their intended purpose was for in the canon of Scripture, but then also for God's people. Share a little bit of that with us.

What did you learn? Yeah, so the Psalms are, oftentimes I think we go to the Psalms as like, I need to go for like an encouragement for my day, so I'm going to go to the Psalms. And there's a lot of encouragement in them. I mean, there are a lot of frameable verses in the Psalms, or we don't understand how to read them because they're poetry. And so what I learned, a couple of things I've learned is first is that they are often written concurrently with what's happening in the historical books.

And so they're on top of the historical books. So when you read something in 1st or 2nd Samuel, there's a lot of times a corresponding Psalm to go along with that. And so it actually illuminates what's happening in the historical books is that these are the reflections of God's people in the midst of very real historical events. So that's helpful in understanding that David felt this way, or even Moses wrote some of the Psalms. Moses felt this way, or Moses was experiencing this and then wrote a poem or a song back to the Lord.

Another thing that's really helpful is that the Psalms are structured. Whoever put the Psalms in the book, we don't know who did it, who compiled them, but they were Israel's hymn book. They were Israel's songs that they sang.

And they were Israel's songs that they sang during exile. And what's interesting about how they're put together, there's five books of them. Each book has its own kind of tone. The first couple of books are heavier in tone in that there's a lot of lament and a lot of sorrow. And then it gets more hopeful as the books and book three is really dark and then it gets more hopeful as it goes on.

And that really tells the story of the Christian life is that while we live through a lot of difficulty and a lot of hardship, where we're ultimately headed is hopefulness because we know the end of the story. So you're here in the hospital. You're studying. You're reading. Did that help?

It did. So I wasn't studying. I was just reading because I'd done all that study prior to. Oh, you had studied prior to the hospital.

Yeah. So all I could do was just kind of read and just think about it. And I would journal about it and just kind of journal about how I was feeling and praying. What was helpful to me about Psalm one and two set up the book of Psalms. And so in Psalm one and two, you see this is how the world is supposed to be. And then you get immediately to Psalm three, which is so much difficulty with David's sons turning against him and so much suffering right at the front end of the Psalms is that Psalm one tells us by meditating on God's word day and night, you'll be like a tree planted by streams of water, which means that you're going to grow and to flourish even in the midst of a lot of difficulty because you have roots that dig down deep to the nourishment of water, which we know in scripture is often used to talk about the way that God nourishes us. And so then Psalm two tells us the end result with the King. There's going to be a King who's going to rule and reign rightly over all things. And so what I found is that all that legwork on the back end, when things were going well in my life, where I studied the word and I had put in the hard work of meditating on God's word, I was able to reap the benefit of that in a really, really hard time when I couldn't do a whole lot of study.

I could just read like a Psalm or two here and there. So in the hospital, I did read, yes. Yeah. So take us back to that.

Take us back to the bed. Yeah. When you're in there.

Yeah. You had to be so worried. I was really worried. In any type of like traumatic situation, you're not really able to process how you feel in that moment. But for me, I found in the hospital that when I would read of people crying out to God, or like in Psalm 27, like I believe I'll look upon the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. I wanted to believe that I would see God's goodness. And so not only did I find prayers to pray back to God, but I also found familiar friends. I was like, I'm not the first person who has been in so much distress about whether or not my life is going to be delivered. And I found what was comforting to me is that it was almost as if God was showing me through His word that I hear you. I know, I know that this world is broken at heart.

I know it's really difficult. And I know you're terrified, but I'm here to hear your prayers. I'm here to hear your cries for help. And I'm here to hear your anxiety and your fear. And I'm ready and willing to sustain you while you're waiting.

And for me, that was really hopeful. And I've been in situations before, I talk about this in the book as well. We've had a lot of medical crises in our family. My twins were born eight weeks premature until they were in the hospital. I mean, twins are just hard in general.

So it was just a really hard year when they were born. And I didn't read my Bible, really ever. And that bore bitter fruit in my life. I really struggled to come to terms with what it meant to be a mom and what it meant to suddenly I was giving up everything for these babies who I thought in my head was a great idea before I had them.

And then I'm in the middle of it and I'm like, this is horrible and so hard. But I didn't read the Bible. And even in the middle of the night with feedings, my husband would try to encourage me like, maybe you could like listen to the Bible. And I would watch TV shows on my phone instead. And so imagine the exact opposite.

You're talking to so many moms right now that are just, you're just worn out. Yes. And it's not wrong to watch a TV show when you're feeding your babies. There's no like versa, but for me... Unless you're watching like a horror movie or something.

Right, right, right. But you are saying you didn't produce much fruit. I didn't produce fruit.

It produced bitter fruit. And I didn't have any perspective. The Lord was kind to give me a do over and to allow me to see that pouring the word into my life was going to reap fruit, even if it meant my circumstances were really scary and hard, but that God was going to sustain me through the word. And I feel for me, that is the message of someone. And for so many people who can see the Lord do that in their lives is that what you pour in is what's going to come out when it's hard.

Yeah. I know that as 2020 started, you know, over a year ago, every year, January one, I'm like, okay, what do I want to read this year in the Bible? Sometimes the one year Bible, she's gone through the one year, like 17 years in a row. I'm bragging on my wife right now. She's just like, so I decided, you know, not knowing COVID is coming. Guess what I decided to do? I'm going to read the book of Psalms this year. There's 150 of them. I'm not going to be in a hurry.

If I take Psalm one, it takes two or three days. I don't care. I'm just going to sit there. And you talk about a great book, not knowing at that moment to be reading during COVID, but like you write in the book, Teach Me to Feel, there's so much emotion and feeling and struggle.

David and others are like, where are you? What is going on? How long? And we're in February, March, April, you know, remember 15 days to stop the spread. And that's where we started in February.

And we all sort of believe that. And then we're in May and here we are. And I'm still in the book of Psalms and I got excited every day. It's like, okay, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to wear sweats all day and no shoes. And I get to read the Psalms, which is going to be emotive. And here's a guy that doesn't feel very good. And so it was a tool, a vehicle to be able to feel and take the emotions that they were feeling and connect them to the life stage I was in.

We're all in. And I had no idea starting a year, like the book of Psalms would be that critical to getting through COVID. And Dave, I think that's God's word. I am amazed of how God's word changes our lives. When you read, you identify like, I have been through that.

God is faithful. It's such a good reminder. And I'm relating to your story too, because all of our sons were put in NICU after they were born. And I'll never forget, yes, after the first one, they said, you know, he had a really traumatic birth and they said, we think he has a skull fracture or doing all kinds of tests. And I remember being in that hospital room and I'm thinking of listeners who have been in hospital rooms filled with fear.

Or even going through a marriage situation where you're just filled with fear and anxiety. Right. And you don't know the future. Right. And I remember I had my Bible with me and I pulled it out.

Dave was out of the room. I wish I could remember the Psalm. It was a Psalm that I read too. And I felt like God was asking me, Ann, you can trust me. And then I also felt like I had this pressing on my soul that was almost as if he was asking, can I surrender this child to him? And what we want to do in our lives is take control. You know, like, I'm going to work this out.

I'm going to figure this out, whether it be our marriage, our kids, our work situations. And God's asking us, can you trust me and give it to me? And so you ended up getting out of the hospital. I did. Your son was born.

He was healthy. Yes. And so that was incredible. Yeah.

But then you talk about getting home. Yes. And it was hard still. It was.

Yeah. I feel like, again, if you've ever gone through anything really traumatic, you don't experience the full weight of that usually until it's over. And so I had some people in my life who were helpful in saying, you're probably going to feel some like really hard things after this all happens. So I was a little bit aware of it, but then some of it was postpartum. I mean, not only did I go through something really traumatic, but I also had a baby. And so I had all those other things and I had now had three other kids.

Yeah. I had four children, four and under. It was really intense. And I still went to the Psalms. The Psalms were such a lifeline for me. And like you were saying, Dave, with this last year, it was so crazy. I wrote this book prior to anything happening with COVID. Obviously, the book was written the summer before and it came out on January 1, 2020.

Wow. And it's just so crazy because it took on a new meaning with everything that happened last year and then all of the unrest and all of the difficulty and all of the just so many things of like when you are crying out for justice, the Psalms can speak to that. And what's so helpful to me about the Psalms also is that so often I take my complaints to somebody else, right?

I mean, we go to other people or I take my complaints to my husband or I just voice them out maybe on the internet. And the Psalms are telling us it's okay to have these feelings, but to direct them to the only one who can do anything about it, not to just throw it out to the void. And so for me, what the Psalms were really helpful in those moments when I came home from the hospital is again, it gave me language for the anguish that I felt and the fear I felt. And for the longest time I struggled, I had some like PTSD type symptoms. And so I had fear of going anywhere. I didn't want to go anywhere because I thought, well, I could just, I could step out in the road and die. I never know what could happen or I don't want anyone to hold my son because he could die.

I don't ever want him to not be in my room with me because he could die. And so I had these really overwhelming feelings of I have no control over anything. And the Psalms helped me. Is there one that really kind of met you?

Yeah. So there were, and when I felt really low with depression, Psalm 88 was really helpful because Psalm 88 has no resolution. It just kind of ends with darkness, whereas the darkness is my only friend. Psalm 77 is another one of those really dark Psalms that seems to imply that it's, that the hand of the Lord is against them. And then Psalm 27 has just been really hopeful for me where it talks about, I believe I'll see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Let's hit one of those. Let's do Psalm 88. Oh, Psalm 88. I feel like if you just read Psalm 88 out loud, I read it out loud in an interview I did one time. And I was like, if your friends had a cross for me and said that to you, like, what would you do?

You know, like it would be a little bit hard. I'm going to read it. I want you to tell me some of your feelings.

Teach us to feel. Okay. I will. Oh Lord, God of my salvation. I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night.

Now hear my prayer. Listen to my cry for my life is full of troubles and death draws near. I'm as good as dead.

Like a strong man with no strength left. They've left me among the dead and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten. I mean, it keeps going, but like, talk about like just that part. When you read that, did you think, I feel like that?

Yes. For me, I felt forgotten. I mean, this isn't true, but I would feel like everyone's life has moved on. And I think sometimes people like for me on the outside, I looked like a normal person. I had brought my baby home.

And you should be thankful and grateful and grateful. And I had a lot of physical ramifications. It was just a really hard recovery for me. And so the trauma and stress of it just put an abnormal amount of stress on my body. So my body just like revolted against me countless times. Cause I now I'm, I'm almost four years removed from it. So I'm able to look back and be like, there were some, so many things going on. And I did get counseling.

Eventually I was, I had a really good friend who again, showed me that I wasn't forgotten. I had made an appointment multiple times and I finally, I kept canceling it because it just felt impossible to go. And she was like, I'm going to watch your children and you're going to go to counseling.

And it was really helpful. I was in counseling for a year. That's when you know you really need it.

I'm going to watch your kids now. Go, you need to go to counseling. As we talk about Courtney's book, Teach Me to Feel, you're learning how to feel again and how to process all these feelings. And a counselor can help with that.

They can. And I needed to rehearse in my mind the circumstances and rehearse that it didn't end in my worst nightmare, you know? And for me, I just kept going back to that worst nightmare and I couldn't get out of the cycle of, it's never going to get better. And what's helpful about Psalm 88 is I once heard a Psalm, the scholars say that the Psalms often have resolution of trust. So most of them start with a cry to the Lord and then you, you move through this pattern and they eventually end in trust.

But Psalm 88 doesn't. And that's really helpful for people because he said, we don't often know when that trust came. It's a poem. It was written.

We don't know if it was written in an afternoon or if it was written over the period of a few years. And we put an unnecessary timetable on people to come to the conclusion that I've poured out my heart to the Lord and I therefore I'm going to get up and trust Him, or I'm going to say, I trust Him. So I think that's helpful that it doesn't end with the trust there.

But I also think what's really helpful is that like, kind of like I said previously is that we often pour our complaints out to everybody else. But the fact that he keeps going back to God shows that he hasn't given up, that God is trustworthy. He just can't see how God is trustworthy, but he's at least going to God.

And for anyone who's struggling with feeling rightly or struggling with anxiety, not clinical anxiety, but you know, like general run of the mill, this is like a scary situation type of thing, or depression or things like, or just dealing with trauma or stress or marital strife or whatever, God has given us language to cry out to Him. And He is a trustworthy friend and He will not abandon us. And He will listen and turn His ear towards us, even if we don't come to that trust right then at the end of it. I think sometimes we just keep going back.

You just keep going back and you just keep going back. And that is when the trust eventually does come, I think, for a believer. Yeah, He's always ready and willing to hear our cries to Him. Yeah, I think, you know, like you said, when you walk through the Psalms, it's sort of like going to a small group for the first time. You know, at our church, we always say, you know, Sunday morning is not going to change your life.

You need to get connected with other people. And when they do, usually you hear something like, wow, I went to this group and I sat in this living room and people struggled just like me. Right. And so when you pick up the book of Psalms, you find that you're like, wow, there, this is a biblical writer complaining, angry, lamenting, struggling. I've done that.

It's okay. And like you said, many times you get to the end, it's like, oh, there is hope. They do still trust. But again, you don't know if that was written in an afternoon or several years, but it leads you to go, okay, I can be honest and real. There is a God who hears. There is a God that's there and I can trust Him, even if I don't know the resolution of my situation.

Right. And what's helpful about Psalm 88 is it tells us who wrote it and he's listed elsewhere. I can't remember if it's like in Chronicles or 1 Corinthians or 1 Kings, but he's listed elsewhere as a godly man in the priesthood of the singers. So we know he's known for being a godly man. And he loves God.

And he loves God, but everybody has low points. And it's okay to lament. You're saying it's healthy to lament.

Most of the Psalms are lament. You know, we started talking about how I don't feel, but I actually do feel. You totally feel.

Yeah. And I can remember I was alone. You were downstairs.

I was in bed the next morning. I had to get up early and go to the hospital for back surgery. And I had gone in a year previously for the same back surgery they sent me home saying, you're healed. It's a long story.

Listeners have heard that story because it was pretty amazing. I thought I had like a New Testament miracle and I did, you know, but a year later I got to have this surgery. And I had sciatica for all these months and it was really bad. And I did what I should never have done that day. I went online and watched a back surgery and it scared me to death, you know, with these tools and drills and saws. So I'm laying in bed that night and hadn't come up and we had to get up early, go to the hospital. All I know is I was so gripped with fear. It just flooded over me. I'm laying there all by myself and I just, I mean, I was like, I'm canceling.

I'm not going in. Some guy's going to be poking around my, you know, my nerve and I could be paralyzed. You know, all these things come in your head and I'm so, and I'm not a fearful guy. Generally, you know, I'm like, let's go for it.

Let's take it. But I'm like, I'm like paralyzed. I'm just laying there like gripped. And the only thing I needed to do was read a Psalm. I was like, I want to read a Psalm because they emote.

And I didn't know what to read. And I don't know why I turned to Psalm 34. It's one of my favorites.

I love that one. My boys and I have memorized it. At least the first part of it.

Yeah. And I memorized it for a while that night because it just ministered to me. So David wrote this and he said, I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

I'm laying there going, okay, this is what I needed to be reminded. Those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers him. And then, you know, I can keep going, taste and see that the Lord is good. But I can just remember laying there and just looking up and going, okay, you've got this. You know what I said?

This sounds corny. I literally said, you've got my back. You know, and sure enough he did, but it was the Word of God through a Psalm like you've written that allowed me to feel. Courtney, I'm thinking of all the people that are listening, especially moms, maybe nursing, maybe just frazzled with their kids, maybe they're working or staying at home.

But I love what you said. You talked about going to God first. It's really easy for us as women to call a friend because our friends will sympathize with us and they'll kind of get right on there or call a mom or a sister. And I remember being a young mom hearing that for the first time thinking, okay, I'm not going to call my friends first or text a friend or do what I am going to go to God first.

It changed everything to the point where I'm just pouring out my heart as the Psalms do, pouring out my heart to God and asking him, like, I need you. I need you to speak to me. I need you to help me. And he does. I think when we go to him, he's like, there you are. I am with you.

I will help you. I hear you. I see you. And I think that's just a great reminder. And I love that you've given us permission to feel and you're helping us learn how to feel through God's word. Jesus is the one who gave the invitation. He's the one who said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you peace. Take my yoke upon you. My burden is light.

My yoke is easy. And I think all of us in a culture that is routinely stirring us emotionally need to remember where we go with that, where we take our troubled soul. We take it to Jesus and we reprioritize our lives.

So we are focused on seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness. David and Wilson have been talking with Courtney Rice today about how we deal with overflowing emotion. Courtney has written a book called Teach Me to Feel. It's a book that looks at how the Psalms help us know what to do with our emotions. And it's a book we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to request your copy of Courtney Rice's book, Teach Me to Feel. Again, it's available online at familylifetoday.com or you can call if you'd like to order by phone. The number is 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. I'm old enough to remember the days when you would hear something on the radio and you would think, oh, I need to hear that again, or I want to share that with somebody.

And you would then call or write and order cassette tapes so that you could pass those along to your friends or have that in your cassette tape library. I am grateful for the fact that when you hear something that you want to hear again or pass along to someone now, you can point that person to our website familylifetoday.com, point them to the Family Life mobile app or tell them to go wherever they get podcasts and listen to a series from Family Life Today. I'm grateful for the technology that makes that kind of instant access to programs like Family Life Today possible for us.

And I'm grateful to those of you who make it possible for us to take advantage of those technologies. Those of you who donate to support the Ministry of Family Life, your donations are used to help expand the outreach of this ministry to help us reach more people more often with God's design for marriage and family. Every day we are touching hundreds of thousands of lives through this program on our website, through our resources and our events. You make that possible when you support the Ministry of Family Life Today. Speaking of events, we have four weekend to remember getaways happening this weekend.

There's one in Little Rock, Arkansas, one in Delray Beach, Florida, one in Pittsburgh, and one in Cleveland. And again, those events happen because folks like you help make them happen through your donations. Thank you to those of you who support this ministry on an ongoing basis.

If you're a longtime listener, join the team. Help extend the reach of family life today. Help us help more couples, more families with practical biblical help and hope. When you make a donation today, we'd love to send you as a thank you gift, Sean McDowell's book called Chasing Love, all about how we think rightly, think biblically about issues related to love, marriage and sexuality. That book is our thank you gift to you when you support the Ministry of Family Life with the donation today.

You can do that online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. And again, thanks for your support and your partnership with us. And we hope you can be back with us again tomorrow when we're going to hear Courtney Rice's story about how she almost died in the midst of one of her pregnancies.

We'll hear how God ministered to her through the Psalms in the midst of her distress. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.